Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Mary Beith Currie was born in 1868 in New Zealand – the daughter of Donald Smith Currie, a shipping clerk, and Annie Maxwell Forsyth. (See 141 A M Currie)
She married Francis John McDonald, a wool broker, in 1889 and they had five sons. When Mary signed the suffrage petition they were living in Invercargill. They moved to Dunedin then
in the late 1890s the family moved to Wellington. In 1901 Francis was declared bankrupt 'a victim of the vagaries of the wool market'.
They later moved to Sydney, Australia where Francis died in 1915 and Mary died in 1923, she is buried in the Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au
NSW Government https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/
Click on sheet number to see the 1893 petition sheet this signature appeared on. Digital copies of the sheets supplied by Archives New Zealand.
Community contributions